Yesterday I called my dad. “Daddy, I’m a SWUG,” I told him.

“Did you know that Joshua Chamberlain taught every class at Bowdoin besides math?” he asked. “Wait, you’re a slug?”

“No, not a slug. A SWUG. It stands for Senior Washed-Up Girl.”

“Oh, ok. Have you called IKEA yet about your missing bed?”

I had, in fact. Because that’s part of being a SWUG—you no longer have small distractions like trying to find someone to buy you Smirnoff or pretending to enjoy the elliptical—you do your tasks like a grown up.

You probably know what a SWUG is (and if not, I recommend you read Raisa Bruner’s 2013 Yale Daily News column on the topic). The term has been around for a while. Long enough, I would argue, that it no longer counts as a trend. It clearly has some cultural stickiness, some enduring cachet. Enough, perhaps, that it merits a closer look.

Since returning to campus from our respective corners of the world, SWUGdom has come up in every conversation I’ve had with my senior female friends. The question is not if we’re SWUGs, but who can out-SWUG the rest.

Some contenders:

“I just need to be naked and doing homework in my room. Alone.”

“I wonder if I can get {insert significant other} to come over and massage my shins. Then leave.”

“I’m doing physics homework and watching 'The Prince and Me' downstairs if anyone’s tryna.”

Going to dinner in clogs, Carhartts and a sweater you knitted yourself.

Going to dinner by yourself, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then leaving.

Going to the Trader Joes in Portland to buy $25 worth of Two Buck Chuck.

Is this what being a SWUG is really about? Disregard for one’s physical appearance along with an increased interest in couches, wine, baked goods and fiber crafts?

Are all senior women SWUGs? Is it some beautiful, Zen-like state you reach just by getting old enough and sticking around Bowdoin long enough? Two years ago, when I was at the zenith of my Franzia-chugging, college house-dwelling, all nighter-pulling existence, Emma Johnson ’14, published a touching op-ed on the inevitability and the joy of SWUG life.

She sang of the Promised Land, and what a paradise it is. As one of my friends, and a self-proclaimed SWUG, pointed out, “washed-up” also means, “arrived.”

But bear with me—I think there’s something more than “not caring anymore” going on here. It seems to me, that more than wine or oversized outerwear, SWUGdom is about women (only “girl” for the sake of the acronym—try pronouncing SWUW), spending time with women, in spaces controlled by women.

We’ve shuffled through enough male-dominated social spaces in the last three years, and now we say no more. From the infamous after parties at a certain now-defunct off-campus sports house, to bong rips with (many genuinely kind-hearted) alt bros, we are through.

There is a simple satisfaction in spending a Friday night in my own living room, and not a room whose floor is mysteriously covered in beer and something that smells like death. It feels good to control the music (a task, it seems, that almost always falls to guys at big co-ed parties). And, of course, your friends don’t instantly scatter like they do upon arrival at a big, sweaty party.

You can call SWUG life self-preservation if you want, or, you can call it reclusivenessbut I don’t think that’s right. I would call it a hard-won liberation.

Anyways, excuse me. It’s time to pop open a bottle of wine, drink two maybe three glasses, and laugh with the women I love best.